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PMDG illuminate tarmac with Dynamic Lighting turned off?

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PMDG models require Dynamic Lighting in order for your lights to see the tarmac. Why do they insist on only making their lights work in this fashion, when Dynamic Lights is so heavy on performance?

Does anyone know of an alternative to get PMDG lights working on the tarmac without Dynamic Lighting enabled? That would be awesome and I would never have to worry about turning on that performance hurting setting on again.

Usually you can get away with dialing AA back to 4xMSAA at night to help offset the hit from DL.  SSAA and DL together can really clobber performance.

The PMDG landing/runway turnoff/taxi lights are compiled into the .mdl files.

Bob Scott | President and CEO, AVSIM Inc
ATP Gulfstream II-III-IV-V

Sys1 (MSFS20+24/XPlane12+11): AMD 9800X3D, water 2x240mm, MSI MPG X670E Carbon, 64GB GSkill 6000/30, nVidia RTX4090FE
Alienware AW3821DW 38" 21:9 GSync, 2x4TB Crucial T705 PCIe5 + 2x2TB Samsung 990 SSD, EVGA 1000P2 PSU, 12.9" iPad Pro
Thrustmaster TCA Boeing Yoke, TCA Airbus Sidestick, Twin TCA Airbus Throttle quads, PFC Cirrus Pedals, Coolermaster HAF932 case

Sys2 (P3Dv5/v4): i9-13900KS, water 2x360mm, ASUS Z790 Hero, 32GB GSkill 7800MHz CAS36, ASUS RTX4090
Samsung 55" JS8500 4K TV@60Hz,
3x 2TB WD SN850X 1x 4TB Crucial P3 M.2 NVME SSD, EVGA 1600T2 PSU
Fiber link to Yamaha RX-V467 Home Theater Receiver, Polk/Klipsch 6" bookshelf speakers, Polk 12" subwoofer, 12.9" iPad Pro
PFC yoke/throttle quad/pedals with custom Hall sensor retrofit, Thermaltake View 71 case, Stream Deck XL button box

Sys3 (DCS/P3Dv4/ATS/ETS): AMD 7800X3D, MSI MPG X870E Carbon, Noctua NH-D15S, 64GB GSkill 6000/30, EVGA RTX3090
Alienware AW3420DW 34" 21:9 GSync, Corsair HX1000i PSU, 4TB Crucial T705 PCIe5 + 2TB Samsung 970Evo Plus,
TM TCA Officer Pack
, Saitek combat pedals, TM Warthog, TM RS300 FF wheel/pedals, Coolermaster HAF XB case

Performance problems with dynamic lighting are (IMO) more the fault of poor optimisation than anything else (and probably also having multiple shadows enabled). I run P3Dv4 @ 4x SSAA with dynamic lighting (but only internal shadows enabled) on my i5 7600k powered PC, and performance varies dramatically. It is pretty decent @ SimWings London Heathrow Professional with the iniBuilds dynamic lighting (and all of that scenery and autogen around London at Extremely Dense setting), and yet somehow the framerate when close to the terminal buildings @ MK Studios Dublin (again with the iniBuilds dynamic lighting) is very choppy indeed, and that only has the PlayHorizon VFR Photographic Scenery Volume 9 package (no autogen) being displayed outside the airport scenery.

On a similar note, the dynamic lighting in my UK2000 airport packages may not be the most complex in the flight simulation world, but it does a good enough job, and I have zero performance problems at any of them.

Edited by Christopher Low

Christopher Low

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU / 64GB DDR5-6000 RAM / 12GB Nvidia RTX 4070 Super GPU / Gigabyte X870E Aorus Elite Wifi 7 / 1+2TB Samsung Evo Plus M2 Nvme

UK2000 Beta Tester

  • Author

Thank you for the suggestions. I personally don't find the cost benefit ratio of Dynamic Lighting to be worth the trouble. PMDG lighting the tarmac is pretty much the only time I ever need it.

After years of each of us dealing with debugging P3D, I think we each have our theories of what causes the most crashes. One of them, for me, is this feature, which I have started disabling for all addons as well. So far so good. Just going to fly during the day on PMDG until I find a fix for lighting the tarmac.

In exchange for leaving it off, I can also turn up all other settings with more confidence.

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